he labeled it ‘vættir ‘s death’. a ‘vættir ‘ is a wight, this word, in its masculine form, referring to that which haunts and is haunted by its need to exist and its eternal lack of form.
one finds meaning where one seeks it. this is no different. pushing back a disappointed anger that little buddha girl says i should not feel, it remains i instantly draw mental lines.
the lines are forms, symbols and sigils, energy, crackling essence that hisses and spits as it arcs over terrain and races low, between the legs and feet of countless beings to find him.
he stands in the library, of course. gazing dreamily off into the sky, a moment between customers and requests and his interest never has managed to rest on earth.
forever the stars, forever weird, semi-decayed cities, aged as if aeons had passed, their people, if present, hidden deep in the ground, but their ancient songs circle that distant, dying world… resonating through its stones, the dirt, the bones and crystals of ageless presence, maybe someday to be heard by a child from the stars. maybe someday to be heard by him, in a dream, and set to some droning ambient bit of ego set forth for mixing and in the name of the creative commons.
as if the illusion of space is somehow less illusion.
never make contact. never actually touch. run, run, run little boy, attractors only bring death, only ending, and the reality of bones here on earth isn’t as romantic as dreaming of ancient bones resonating in cool, moist, packed and ancient somewhereelse’s, i know.
sangria and incense and anxiety. discursive thought indulged and set into the labrynth, chase the rat who chases the cheese that doesn’t exist, only run faster, don’t lose it, don’t stop, the infinite forever waits just ahead… see it? look… there… just around that corner. chasing the vanishing point, wrapped in delusion’s embrace and whispering eternal love as if it may be possessed.
but the lines have him now… arcing invisible irresistible and strong, auras of nothingness encasing his stubborn insistence upon self. outlining all he would be and in it, pointing to all he is not, the irony of their relation to one another is the imponderable that is enlightenment.
i stand there, enveloping him enveloping me, for the lines are not really separate, nor are we. in those moments when fear lets him breathe, he can still manage to pay lipservice to it… but fear draws him like fire, like steel filings, like the vanishing point.
to hear him speak of a bond these days is a sickening thing to me. for all i know we are intrinsicly bound. he mouths the words but his mind floats in the milky way, forever looking outward so he doesn’t have to look in. or at another. reflections are still reminders, i suppose.
i’ve finally stopped chasing him. but i still hear his footsteps. i still wonder on the truth he tells but seems unable to hear. how is it the mouth can move, but the mind remains numb?
i’d ask him, but he never could hear me.
i’d ask myself, but i’m too busy running my own labrynth of ego and avoidance to listen to myself.
but i still write the words. the echoes last long and will return when i am finally able to hear them.
he turns to take a cart of books to the stacks. smiling to those around him, blue eyes that i do not think i will ever truly forget.
a lama recently said, “If there is one person that you can’t get along with, for a Buddhist, it is one person too many.”
my question in return was my own conundrum and conflict with this concept made words, “if indeed the above statement is true, what solution for a wrecked relationship but to let it go?
when trying only makes it worse, and not trying is to turn away, what’s left?”
the real question is actually harder to put into words… and likely it is best this is so.
so why do i continue trying?
it has taken almost a year and more blood than ever i freely gave in my life entire to get to the place to simply admit the abject impossibility of it all.
the latest rendered actions didn’t make me angry. which is a first. they just made me so incredibly sad for it all that it was hard to breathe.
i hesitate to call it compassion. but maybe it is… all i could think about was how utterly tragic it is that three people so utterly able so utterly refuse to be so.
he and he and me.
but there is no trust left. no ability to believe. no hope. and no wish to ever again find them. only quiet certainty, only the purest and most total knowledge that it is done.
this life, anyway.
i ponder for a short time if, next round, any of us will choose differently.
i’d say i hope so, but in truth, in this moment, i wish only that, next round, we are wise enough to remain free.
and, of course, here, in this moment, little buddha girl thanks them for the acts that insured a return to freedom.
the human in me struggles and has done so all through this writing. ego is mortally wounded. that’s not a bad thing. pride has never been as much an issue, though pride of no pride remains so… which is, pride. i laugh.
of the three, i speak only rarely of him… the m… for so long his presence has been only sibilant hiss from hidden corners. i wonder briefly if he enjoys the anniversary edition book i sent him through the one he could receive it from.
i wonder why i sit here and ache for all the sharing we never knew for our choices. is this compassion? why is it so sad?
the question. i remind myself. and here, try to set it more clearly into the light…
if wish to aid and benefit is not enough, and striving to be empty and open is not enough, and resisting poisons are not enough, and prayers and meditations are not enough, and palms up and being weaponless is not enough, and rolling in the dirt, exposing delicate and tender flesh, shaking with the effort of trying to express good will is not enough, and refusing to retaliate … even in the face of constant hatefulness is not enough, and opening the artery is not enough… what is?
if none of this enough, what can ever be… enough? believed? accepted?
not that knowing in this moment can change the past.
i do not want to know for then. nor for when. only now.
but i am so ignorant.
meta. metta. met ah.
triads. ever and always.